Hard to shake hands with her
by MilaDance
Summary: This story is something I started thinking about as I read Catching Fire, before I found out about Annie's existence. So it is set in the same world as the real trilogy, just with a completely different story for Finnick and Johanna. It is their story.
1. 74th Hunger games part 1

Hard to shake hands with her

AN: This story is something I started thinking about as I read Catching Fire, before I found out about Annie's existence. So it is set in the same world as the real trilogy, just with a completely different story for Finnick and Johanna.

"When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her." Oscar Wilde

First chapter: 74th Hunger Games Part 1

The sun won't be up for another few hours and most Capitol citizens won't be awake for quite some time. The halls of the big building will be empty except for an Avox here or there, but they have never really said a word in all of these years, not that they actually can. Most look another way, one or two have smiled and one, a really brave one, winked once. They have seen him on TV, or in the hallways, always surrounded by multiple ladies, most of them rich or old or both and you can see on their faces that they think she just couldn't resist him. Which suits her just fine. She gets up, puts on her underclothes and then her thin dress, ruffles her hair to make it look more "carefully coiffed to look unkempt" and less "slept until 3 minutes ago".

She keeps it short now. It used to be long, very long, all the way down her back to her waist, but back then, in the games, someone grabbed her by it as she ran, threw her to the floor, cracked a rib or two and nearly killed her. She had looked the boy in the eyes as she stabbed him in the neck with her knife and seen the life go out in them. He was her first kill, in self defense and yet she still sees those eyes; the surprise, then pain and finally death in them and she still feels someone yank her hair in her sleep, even though it is only a few inches long and not yankable anymore.

Her boots are by the door, she puts them on, high heels, very uncomfortable, but this one month a year she knows comfort is secondary and looks are everything. Carefully not to be too loud, she walks back, sits on the bed on his side and leans over. He smells like soap and sleep. And a little bit like saltwater. Or what she imagines saltwater to smell like. His hair, his face, everything about him is gorgeous, glorious, fantastic. No wonder he is so popular. But she can see beyond that, she can see past his gorgeous green eyes and see the pain of having to kill a 13 year old girl to ensure he stays alive, she can see past his glorious smile and see the grimace of horror he has on it when the nightmares hit, she can see past his fantastic body to see the broken boy inside. Tenderly she strokes his hair, lets her fingers wander across his cheek, warm and soft, a tiny bit stubbly and so familiar.

He turns around quickly, looks at her in fear for a second, then relaxes. "Hey" he croaks, sleep in his throat "leaving already?"

She nods, "I don't want to risk it… only few tributes left, they will start to be up earlier these days. And the whole lover thing on top of it, I bet there will be cameras everywhere, getting our "reactions". Interview us so we can say how much we adore them." She rolls her eyes, scowls while he sits up a little, puts one arm around her and encourages her to melt into his chest. She stopped caring about her tributes the minute she saw them, possibly even earlier, she stopped caring about all tributes the first year she was asked to mentor them and they both died on the first day, but losing both in the first 10 minutes of the game still hurt. She never says their names, for years has called them "boy" and "girl" but before going to sleep she thinks their names, all 14 tributes she has mentored and lost, like a little prayer.

He knows her, he understands her sadness and anger and guilt and he doesn't say anything, because there are no words, just presses a kiss to her forehead. She knows he feels the same, or maybe not quite the same because his tributes are always big strong kids, who want to be in the game, volunteers who fight for the spot, and nothing like the skinny, hungry kids that cry for their mothers on the train she gets year in and year out. But they are children nonetheless, children he mentors and then they go and die. And he doesn't have to mentor them every single year like she does, there are plenty of District 4 victors still alive while she is the only District 7 girl to ever win and therefore the girl mentor for life.

But he does understand and she is thankful. She pushes away from his chest, puts a hand on his neck, draws his head closer to hers and gives him a soft kiss on the lips. "I should get going." He shakes his head "Stay… a few more minutes. Please." She considers it, who knows how many more days the games will be. And the end of the games means going back home and then another year of loneliness and waiting starts. She shudders at the thought and he doesn't need words to understand.

"Hey, the district 12 girl looks tough, and District 2 is not giving up, this could go on for another week. Or longer" he whispers and she bites the inside of her cheek. Physical pain is always preferable. Then she sits up and says "I really need to go before it gets even later. See you at the viewing platform." And rushes to the door, puts on her usual bitch-face before opening the door, in case she meets anyone. A good defense is the best offense. As her hand grabs the handle he says the goodbye he has used every day since they started this, the sentence that ends each of his letters "No matter what you see and no matter what happens today, I love you, Johanna."

The viewing platform is an odd place, full of strange characters, crazy people and downright the least likable human beings you could ever meet. The people taking bets seem to have lost all humanity and calling them human beings doesn't even feel right, Finnick thinks, and then smirks when it occurs to him what Johanna would say. "Who died and made you the moral compass of the world?" And she is right of course. The bet takers are despicable but unlike the first four rows of the viewing platform they are not the ones who killed child after child and now live off the fame of having done that.

He nods to the other victors, the brutal but sane looking ones, the drunk at 8 am ones, the old and deluded ones, the broken and not going to be fixed ones, as he walks to his seat. There are several letters on it and a couple of gifts. They each have a fixed seat here. He has sat in this very seat for the past 9 years watching the games on the giant screen surrounded by smaller screens in which they get to see different angles and what other tributes are doing. His seat is in the first row because he is more likely to have a victor and they can film his face a lot better there than if he was buried in the fourth row. And maybe they also enjoy showing him every now and then, with the capitol ladies that buy their way in and then whisper sweet capitol secrets in his ear in exchange for him spending some time with them. These secrets will come handy one day, the revolution will come at some point and he will use them, of that he is sure.

He opens the letters but doesn't read them, hands the liquor filled chocolates over to the drunks in row three and stares at the screen. He can't eat while he watches that poor blond boy die from an oozing wound in his leg, but the drunks have no problem with it. They even ate through the day several tributes, amongst them the girl from his district, practically exploded from the inside out from tracker jacker stings. He feels his coffee making its way back up his throat as he thinks back to that girl, who only days earlier had blushed beet-red and blown him a kiss, with her face distorted and one of her eyes pressed out of its socket from the sting on her eyelid. He swallows hard and tries to see if Johanna has made it into the room out of the corner of his eyes. He doesn't say anything, but he is always afraid she will be caught when she sneaks out in the morning. Victors may talk on the viewing platform, but are not to be amicable otherwise. Districts shan't mix. That is the whole point of the hunger games. You are not to be friends, you shall kill each other for our pleasure. And too much communication is dangerous.

They knew they were going against all sorts of rules when he first met her at the 66th games and was impressed by her strange sweetness, something she lost forever that year at the games. She was playing the wide eyed innocent sweetheart nobody thought capable of killing a fly, but she was in fact sweet, if in a less innocent way. She was also funny, with a wicked dark humor and incredibly quick thinking, a great actress. When he lured her into his room, secretly, before the games, hoping to get her into bed, she played right along and then somehow managed to get some secrets out of him, went into the games knowing the district 4 Achilles heels. And he secretly admired her for this. She could cry on command and looked like the most scared little girl ever, with her flowing mane of ridiculously long locks and the way she looked at knives as if she had never cut a piece of bread in her life. Then she used her small size and her quickness to spear people in the neck with the knife, cut throats left, right and center. He found himself hoping she would make it out of there more and more each day and he ached when she was wounded but when she finally won, he sneaked into the hospital wing, sat by her side and held her hand. The girl who came out of the Arena was not the same one going in and she was scared and scarred and he knew how that felt; in that hospital wing night after night they talked and he fell in love.

Finally she walks in, lips pursed as usual, ready to complain and to ridicule. She sees him and nods in his direction, then lets herself fall into her chair and rolls her eyes as she starts to list the things that annoy her to her neighbor, Woof from district 8, who could not care less. Finnick lets out a little sigh of relief and his attention is back on the screen. The district 12 lovers are hogging the attention and he finds himself pulled in a little bit. If they win, if they even really let two people win, what will their lives be like? Will they let them be happy?

He thinks of his own life after the games, basically a male prostitute for the entire Capitol spinster community, something he did not chose but was forced into and he knows better not to change, for his own security. Johanna did not bend to their wishes and his respect for her grew a million fold when he found out. But she paid bitterly for it and she understands that he cannot do the same. When her entire family died in a tragic accident in the woods, her parents, older brother, sister in law and baby niece, another part of her got lost for good and when she found out the awful truth guilt washed over her and she tried to kill herself. It was in the first year after her games and he received a clandestine goodbye letter and cried over her death. But she was there at the next games, thin pink lines on her forearms and the complete lack of emotion in her eyes the only reminder of what happened and he had sneaked her into his room and told her he loved her and that she had a reason to keep going.

Would they make the district 12 lovers do things they despised? Have children against their wishes? Possibly reap those children as soon as they were 12? They are capable of everything.

At lunchtime she bumps into him "Hey Finnick Odair, you masterpiece of the human race, you, some of your fan-mail did not stay contained to your row." She says with the meanest of grins on her face, rolling her eyes so violently he is afraid they might roll out of her head and hands him an envelope, then turns on the spot and doesn't even give him another look as she walks to a table at the end of the viewing cafeteria and starts eating even though on the several screens of the cafeteria a close up of the feverish district 12 boy is shown as he vomits up some bile. He looks at the envelope, recognizes her handwriting and stuffs the letter in his pocket, then attempts to eat in the company of old Mags, who has grown more unintelligible as she lost all of her teeth, but he enjoys her quiet company and she knows him like a grandmother in a way, she even knows about Johanna. And so after forcing down a few bites, he takes the letter out and reads it, even allows himself to smile a little. She has just dotted down a few very dark jokes about the remaining tributes. He looks around the cafeteria and thinks, some people use drugs and alcohol to dull the pain of watching this, some make it all a big joke.

She was never one to write big sweeping statements of love, she rarely even says she loves him, ends the letters that keep them in contact through the 11 months of the year they can't see each other in "you know, J.". And he does know. He knows she is afraid of saying it or writing it down because sometimes it just sounds too much like a permanent goodbye.

In the afternoon there is an announcement in the Arena, there will be a feast. No wonder, the boy from district 12 looks two inches from death and the red-haired girl from 5 is starting to look like a corpse so much that he keeps wondering why the canon doesn't fire whenever they show her lying in some little hole she dug for herself. For the mentors and old victors this means no sleep, as they are expected to stay in the viewing platform for this. He watches how the district 12 girl drugs the dying boy into a comatose sleep and remembers just in time that he had an appointment with an old lady who used to be a favorite of president Snow's 30 years ago. He leaves and meets her in the room he uses for the lady-dates. He never takes them to the room where he sleeps with Johanna. She is strangely dressed with lots of feathers but not much fabric, surgically altered to resemble someone half her age, and already somewhat drunk when she arrives. He massages her dough-like body, tells her she is beautiful and locks every single sentence she says in the safe of his mind, for use at a later point. When he finally leaves, luckily she can't miss the games for too long and therefore hurries off after just a few hours, he rushes up to his room to shower before going back to the viewing platform and finds a surprise in his room.

She grins at him and at his questioning face says "shower first, you smell like Capitol lady" and then halfway through his shower joins him. "It is daytime. You are crazy!" he half-protests. "Everybody is glued to their seats watching the games, nobody cares" she replies. "And I was sent here to give you a message from Heavensbee… he says the games are going well, better than planned. And that the lady you spent time with today, she could be crucial. You know, he says to keep her happy." Heavensbee is the double agent in the capitol, their biggest hope for change. "Tell him, she is very happy. And so are we." he mutters as he bends down to kiss her.

They lie on the bed for a few minutes, allowing themselves a little breather from everything. Hands joined, fingers intertwined, eyes closed. The feast means a few more deaths, a few more memories back, more vividly than ever; there was a feast in each of their games.

She jumps up, gets dressed quickly, kisses him softly, gently, then goes to the door under his watch. "Don't worry, official mission from a Games judge… nobody will say anything." She leaves, before she fully closes the door she sticks her head back in. A rare smile reaching her eyes: "You know, Finnick!"


	2. 74th Hunger games part 2

The 74th Hunger Games part 2

The girl is getting stoned to death on the screen. The big black boy has arms that are as thick as her torso and the rock hits her temple and crushes her skull. The cameras used for the games are the best quality available and you can not only see every last drop of blood on the piece of rock, you can even hear the crunching noise of the bones collapsing. Nausea hits him instantly and he closes his eyes, breathes through his nose, tries to think himself away. The capitol viewers, sitting in the larger viewing auditorium downstairs, the non-VIP area so to speak, start clapping and booing and yelling. Most people are so sucked in to the lovers that they have been betting on them, but there are the people who have always bet on 2, some have even made a small fortune by doing this; 2 is the district with the most wins over the years and this year they looked like a shoo in for a win. This girl is, no was, vicious and did not seem to feel any remorse, the boy… he is huge and seems somewhat unstable. The unstable ones always do better than the sensible ones.

He reopens his eyes to see the big boy and the small district 12 girl talk, to see him let her get away with her backpack and he is a little bit relieved. He has learned over the years never to root for any of them, because inevitably they lose. Even if they win, they lose- Look at us, he thinks. We all won and what are we? A big mess, that is what we are. Damaged beyond belief. As if on cue a small victor from before he was born, high as the sky on morphling, gets up and starts whistling a soft tune while she dances in a small circle by herself. Two Capitol workers come in almost instantly and violently drag her off the platform. They largely ignore the drunks, the crazies and the addicts on the platform, but during important events, when the Capitol people will want to know how the old victors react and cameras sprout out of every corner, they need to make sure the lot of them looks regal and in shape. They are the pride of the nation after all, the strongest and best. Capitol favorites.

"Ah, see, she got him the medicine, the world is right again. They will live happily ever after… or until they are killed tomorrow, who knows?" he hears Johanna snidely remark in her fourth row seat and he wishes she would stop it. Usually he enjoys her humor, usually he loves that she is a rebel, unafraid of going against the Capitol, but today, with cameras everywhere, chances are the Capitol workers will have her arrested and tortured for good measure if she doesn't shut up. But she is stubborn. And loud.

Most of the rebels know to be quiet. Just like they will know when to speak up, once the time is right. Of the 40 or so victors who are still alive, at least 15 are part of the rebels, though you would never know which ones by just looking at them. And you would never know that there is something uniting them. The rebel movement was born a long time ago, initially just a few idealists who smoked a lot of mary-plant, a soft hallucinogen, and talked more than they did, a few people from each district, but it had been growing more and more important in the past few years. Some districts have movements that are big, that have weapons hidden away, whole armies, ready to go when the time is right. Other districts are pretty much ignored. Twelve for example is a mess, tiny and very poor, governed by a little man with no fire in him and nobody hating on him. A bad growing medium for rebellion. You need to be fed to have the strength to fight, you need to have a very present enemy to bind together in hatred. Someone thousands of miles away in a city only ever seen on television does not count. The only district 12 victor alive is a drunk who is smarter than most and who is informed of everything, but he cannot be counted as a real rebel, for he will not do anything for them. But at least he doesn't do anything against them either.

Finnick had been contacted the third year after his games. Life for him, as for every other victor, was divided in before games and after games. He had received one of the rebellion letters, folded inside a piece of wood, not too much unlike what Johanna and he had been using to send letters back and forth illegally between districts four and seven. It informed him of the inter-district rebellion and asked him to join them and he didn't know what to do initially. He has a younger brother, Kai, who he was afraid for if he was caught, but then one night he lay with a woman three times his age, who told him about how the Capitol scientist chose orphans from the high number districts, especially 11, because "they breed like rabbits", to try out new drugs and surgeries. How they had sawed open the skull of babies and disconnected pieces of their brains to understand better how they worked. How they just piled the children that did not make it up and burned them. And this lady was not complaining about the cruelty or injustice, no she was complaining that the smoke from the fires sometimes reached her windows and how she could not stand the smell. And he knew that if he wanted to stay alive, not just physically, but emotionally, he had to do something. He wrote back, sent the letter, as directed, baked into a loaf of bread to someone in the city and received the electronic device a few weeks later. It was small, like a small television that fit into the palm of your hand and kind of bendy, so it would fit into small places like undergarments. It receives letters and news. It is a most incredible invention, made by the rebels in District 3, and the most amazing thing about it is that it is untrackable as the waves used to send information changes constantly. Everything that gets written on it can be read by everybody in the rebellion for a few hours, sometimes a few days. Well, by everyone who owns a device, because not all rebels have one, but all the leaders do and the victors who joined each got one too. Because they are valuable. They have more power than most, because they are public figures, because everybody knows their names and because they are beloved by the Capitol people. And most of them have a special mission. His is to discover secrets.

He had not known if he should tell Johanna and when he finally did, he found out to his surprise that she had been contacted before him, she had signed up before even finishing the letter. She had nothing really to lose at that point. Except for him.

He watches the red haired girl eat the dried meat in her backpack on the screen, wash it down with some juice, and is relieved to not hear any more commotion coming from the fourth row. His eyelids are starting to get heavy, but he knows better than to fall asleep in the platform seat. He once asked Mags if the nightmares ever stop and she had shown him how her teeth had been gnawed down. 60 plus years after her games she still grinds her teeth in fear at night. Well, nowadays she grinds her gums. He wonders if the brute victors from district 1 or 2 also cry in their sleep and then remembers that like him, they were trained for it, like him they volunteered to go in, eager to show their prowess in the Arena. And he reckons that they, like him, never thought that winning could be almost as bad as losing in these games.

He sits up, rubs his eyes and wonders if nobody is going to leave soon, giving him an excuse to also disappear, just as they apparently decide to show the victors' reactions to the feast. He smiles his most winning smile into a camera, winks and shakes his hair back and hears a lot of oohs and aahs from the Capitol seats downstairs. The women he slept with, the ones he will sleep with, in the next week, next year, next decade. A pressure starts in the middle of his chest and quickly encompasses his entire body… the panic of inevitability, of being caught in this life. He watches as Johanna, dark shadows under her eyes matching the black lines she draws around them, the black powders she applies to her eyelids, scowls at him, and the entire Capitol, from the giant screen. A smile spreads on his face, a real one. She never fails to pull him out of his self pity. He knows what she would say "What are you complaining about? Enough men not getting any ever and you complain about getting too much! Men!"

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She is sitting sideways, her legs dangling off the side of her seat into her neighbor's. He hasn't come to the platform for days and she is not sure if he is just too drugged out of his mind or if he, like her, is just bored to tears. There are few things less interesting than watching rain, one of them possibly watching rain on a screen. In the Arena it has been raining for days and the death of Thresh, the "gentle giant" who smashes skulls with rocks as if they were peanuts, was thankfully quick, which means that for 2 days they have basically been watching people asleep in the rain. She can't understand how the redhead is still alive, but she kind of roots for her. Not that she actually roots for anybody, but she seems the least deadly of the bunch, except maybe for the blond lover boy… but even he killed someone early on, and having someone win the games who did not cause the death of a single tribute would be such a punch in the face of the game-makers. Which means there is probably an avalanche or a giant lizard already out there, heading for the hollow-cheeked girl.

Only 4 to go, at the most 3 more days. Then a week or two while they put the victor back together like all the king's horses and all the king's men try with humpty dumpty. She doesn't even know what a Humpty Dumpty is… but she remembers her grandmother saying this children's rhyme to her when she was little and when she asked what a King was her grandmother replied "Like a president, only not mean". She misses the old lady. No, she doesn't. She doesn't allow herself to miss anyone, because if she does there would be nothing left of her. Too many to miss.

In 3 weeks at the most she will be back home. In her victor's house. By herself. She shares the entire victor's village with 2 neighbors, one Holt, who seems to basically just eat all day long. He is the fattest man she has ever seen and his mouth is always full of some half chewed mass, even when he talks. He won some 20 years ago, and ironically he won by outrunning everybody else when they were attacked by a trio of mutts that seemed like a cross between a bear and a venomous snake. It is hard to fathom, nowadays he can barely walk from his couch to the bathroom. The other one is Blight. He doesn't talk much. Or do much. He seems to simply exist, silently. Actually, sometimes she forgets he does.

Fed up with the rain on the screen she gets up and announces "I can watch the same thing in my shower" and gets off the platform and back into the victory building. Finnick knows that she is leaving, he will leave in a few minutes. They never leave together, even though it wouldn't be suspicious. Others leave in groups, too. No point in risking anything though, life is risky enough as it is.

The little redhead is dead. The lovers poisoned her, maybe by mistake, and now the final battle is on, lovers against that overgrown toddler from district 2. She looks at the screen and bites into her piece of orange. Finnick can't eat during the games, for someone who claims not to ever have been seasick he gets surprisingly easily sick when on solid ground, but nothing affects her. She is numb. So what if that mutt just chewed off half the leg of the lover boy? She has seen worse. She has _done _worse. She sees worse every night and every time she lets her mind wander. She chews and offers a piece to Blight who shakes his head. "Better, more for me."

The noise from the Capitol audience is starting to get deafening. They love it. Lover boy bleeding to death on the Corn and the other boy being chewed to bits under it. Even from here, even only seeing an inch of neck, she can tell that Finnick has gone green. Poor pretty boy, she thinks and grins.

They say it never gets easier, but they are wrong. It is easier to watch kids die when you have seen them do it by the dozen. He says, it is all an act, she is not really as cold as she claims to be, but sometimes she worries she actually is. Cold. And dead inside. The girl from 12, she is probably going to win, with or without the boy. Which is fine. Less reconstructive surgery than if the district 2 boy wins… they would have to somehow make him a new head at this point.

The screams and cries from the boy are terrible, blood curdling and they keep going. All night. She leaves to go to the bathroom and in the hallway she realizes she is shaking. Finnick is coming back from the bathroom, he must have thrown up the two bites of dinner he managed to eat, and he sees her leaning against the wall, trembling like a leaf in a thunderstorm. She is glad that if anyone has to see her like this, that it is him. He comes closer, then wraps her in his arms. It only lasts a few seconds then he lets go and they walk in opposite directions without looking back.

The cannon fires and the hovercraft collects the boy. It is all over, they won, first time ever, two victors. Johanna does not trust the game-makers though. She had told Finnick last night that she was sure they would not allow this to happen and the boy seems to be about 5 minutes away from bleeding out. Maybe they will just be slow enough to lose him. Then the announcement. Not two victors at all. Just one. Go ahead and kill each other lovers!

She knew not to trust and now she watches, for the first time these games absolutely glued to her seat, how the girl puts an arrow in her bow and aims at the boy's head without delay, without even a second thought. He does the opposite though, just waits for her to do it, hopes she will shoot him and win. Granted, Johanna is no expert in love, but if that was her and Finnick, would she immediately try to kill him? She does not think so, hopes she would not, and she is suddenly very suspicious of this lover girl. Was it all for show? She thought she would know an act if she saw one, what with her being possibly the most successful of all the faking tributes in history, but she did not see through this.

However, lover girl does not shoot him instead they both take a few of the deadly berries, they announce that they will sacrifice themselves for their love and put the berries in their mouth. The screaming in the viewing auditorium is deafening. And the Capitol surrenders to these two teenagers. They won. They tricked the Capitol. She feels the little electric jolt her device gives off when they get a new message and she sees several of the victors suddenly move oddly, spasm or shake. Nobody takes it out though, of course nobody does, it would be crazy. Here in front of everybody, in front of cameras that will be filming them in no time at all to see how they react to having these kids among their group from next year onwards. She lets the orange peel she was playing with fall and crawls past Blight's seat under Holt's. There is no way anyone can see her under 500 pounds of human. She takes the device out of the pocket inside her bra. Only four words are on the small screen, four words that make her tremble again, this time in anticipation though. Change is coming. Nothing will ever be the same.

"Mission Mockingjay starts today"


	3. Aftermath of the 74th HG Part 1

Aftermath of the 74th Hunger - Games Part 1

The celebrations go on all night. Every year the people who bet on the victor, suddenly flush with cash and high on the feeling of a victory, buy drinks and celebrate. And those who bet on the other tributes drown their sorrow in the free liquor. This year a huge majority had bet on the lovers and the celebrations feel even bigger, louder and more sumptuous than usual. The old victors are paraded around, interviewed, shown off, while in the background images upon images from the games that just finished are played on an eternal loop. The girl shooting her arrows, the boy covering himself in mud, the two of them kissing in the cave. She stands around, dying to get him to herself, to get some privacy, to discuss what just happened, but as the evening goes on and on and she is shown off by her sponsors and nowhere near getting that private moment, she starts accepting drinks and by the time she notices people starting to leave, she feels quite drunk. He is surrounded by women, nothing new there, but the alcohol in her makes her feel more pointedly jealous and she has to actively stop herself from going over there and pulling the wig off the woman kissing him. She goes to the bathroom and stares at the mirror, dabs some water on her face and her wrists to try to calm down the hot hatred in the pit of her stomach. Her fingers run along the thin scars on her wrists, they are smooth and they remind her of her lowest ever point- the moment when she woke up in that sterile room and realized that she had not succeeded, that the one thing she thought was always an out, the exit from this life that did not feel like a life but a punishment, was not actually an option. They would not let her die, no matter how miserable she was. Because dying was winning. She swallows the alcohol-laced bile that reaches her mouth at the memories she rarely allows and touches her chest, where the device is pressed to her skin. Soon they won't be in charge anymore, she reminds herself and leaves the bathroom.

Plutarch catches her in the corridor and whispers "we are meeting tomorrow, be there", then hurries past her. She smiles, it really is happening. She looks out of one of the windows and sees the commotion of the celebration, nobody will miss her if she does not go back. Nobody will even notice. She is not Finnick, whose absence would be a huge letdown, she is just herself, a victor who was famous for 15 minutes like so many of them. And since she refuses to be used by the Capitol, she is really one of the least interesting victors. She walks to the elevator and leans on the wall to steady herself, then once she is quickly ascending, she takes her shoes off and walks to Finnick's room barefoot, slips in unseen and finishes getting undressed. She considers throwing up the alcohol to prevent the headache that is going to torture her tomorrow, decides against it and just lies down on his side, where the pillow smells like him and closes her eyes. Before sleep can carry her to the place where nightmares torture her, she lets her drunken mind wander, fantasize with a world where one is free to love whoever one wants, to sleep with whoever one wants, to kill oneself if one feels the need to. And she smiles as she falls asleep.

* * *

><p>The sun is tingeing the sky pink, the few clouds shimmering in pastel colors, baby blue and rosé and soft violet, as he walks up to his room. The celebration is still going on, though most people are too drunk to really do much other than fall over. The Capitol citizens love a good party and find it hard to stop, but finally he got rid of the last lady, clinging to his arm, like a leech, a few minutes ago. It has been over 48 hours since he last left his room, the last day of the games is always difficult and he feels so tired he can barely think straight. He finds his door and struggles with the key card. So much has happened since he last closed this door; the death of that poor tribute that made him throw up repeatedly (he can still hear his screams in his head, a tinnitus of pain and anguish), the strange victory, then not victory, then again victory, of the district 12 tributes, the message on his device, the festivities. She disappeared hours ago and when he sees her in his bed, he lets out a breath he did not know he was holding. He doesn't know why he worries so much more in the Capitol, when she is close by, than the 11 months a year when she is thousands of miles away, where he doesn't even know the dangers she may face day by day. They say, you prefer the dangers you know than those you don't, but he disagrees.<p>

She is lying on his bed, on his side, on her tummy, naked. She did not even bother getting under the covers. He smiles a little, gets undressed and slides in next to her, on her side. Her pillow smells of the soap she uses, but when he creeps a little closer to her, the pungent smell of alcohol covers any soapy scent she may have left on the bed. He furrows his brow and pulls the sheet up, covers her naked back, then rests his hand under the sheet on her smooth bottom. Victors never sleep deeply, they are always close to consciousness, too aware that any touch could be someone trying to kill them in their sleep, but apparently that is not true for drunk victors. She doesn't even stir. Maybe he should get drunk one of these days, he thinks. Maybe drunk he won't wake up periodically every 45 minutes bathed in sweat. He never gets drunk, his stomach is not strong. And secretly he is afraid that if he starts he won't be able to stop and he has nothing but disdain for the drunken victors. They are pathetic, unable to control themselves, and control is important when one collects secrets. He looks at his very own personal drunken victor, lying there next to him, stretches a little and kisses her forehead. Tomorrow they will have so much to talk about.

Despite going to bed many hours after her, he is first to wake. His device vibrated in his sock, a sock he was too tired to take off yesterday and he jolts up, ripped out of a nightmare in which he was drowning a young girl. A nightmare that is not as much nightmare as it is memory. He retrieves the small little screen and reads a time and place for a meeting with Plutarch. He looks at his watch and sees that he only slept a few hours. The meeting is in 2 hours and he doesn't trust himself to be up and ready for it, if he lets himself fall asleep again. He thinks about letting her sleep but then can't really stop himself as he shakes her softly. She turns around, disoriented, her eyes wide with fear and he soothingly whispers "hey hey, it is just me". She looks at him and the fear leaves her eyes as she rolls them at him, lets her head fall back on the pillow, heavily and flat on her face, and murmurs, her voice barely more than a croak "I feel like death" into the pillow. He laughs "well that is what happens when you get drunk, Johanna!" and she groans a word he can't quite decipher but is fairly sure is not exactly something kind. "Plutarch sent out a time and place for a meeting", she slowly turns her head to face him, half opens one of her eyes and croaks "met him yesterday I think, said something about meeting, maybe". He laughs again and quickly sits up, leaves the bed and gets a bottle of water from the little cupboard in the wall as well as a couple of blue pills and hands both water and pills to her. "Can't drink lying, can't sit" she croaks and he puts both water and pills on the bedside table and gets back into the bed. "Suit yourself". She slowly turns herself around, sits up, takes the pills and washes them down with several large gulps of water. Then she lies back and looks at him, both eyes open this time. "The revolution is coming". He grins, "yeah, I guess it is". "Do you think it will work? How fast… when do you… what will happen now?" He shakes his head "I don't know, it will take a while, to rile the people up, to get more people involved, I guess. They won't go down without a fight. It might get ugly. Scrap that. It will get ugly." She nods, "Well, it can't get much worse." Finnick doesn't agree. It can get worse. Much worse. The last rebellion was a mess and ended in them creating these games that have scarred them both. They could kill his father and mother. They could torture Kai, who is not even old enough to participate in the reaping yet. They could do something to her. "War is always worse than not war" he says. She sees his fears in his eyes, knows them, because they were the fears she used to have, the fears that became a reality, and she comes closer. Takes his hand and says "this war is worth fighting.". He shakes his head quickly, looks at her and then smiles "look at you bundle of optimism" and she scowls at him. "Don't get used to it. But I have nothing to lose in this war." He shakes his head. "You could lose me." She looks him square in the eye and after thinking for a moment, probably trying to find a way to say this, without sounding cold, she replies "this is bigger than us. We can't let… this… stop us from being useful for this revolution. Promise me, you won't do anything stupid for me. This is for Kai. And other kids like him. We are rebels first." His heart swells, he is proud of her, even though she used the one card she knows will win every time. Kai. He nods, she is right. Love only goes so far. Freedom is more important. And even though just the idea of something happening to her feels like someone is strangling him, he understands. He nods at her. "I promise. You?" She nods and then a mischievous smile creeps up her face, she starts kissing his neck and whispers "let's make the most out of our time then, huh?" before she takes his undershirt off and they sink back into the bed.

* * *

><p>The meeting goes as planned, 20 victors are there, among them the victormentor from 12, who is still incredibly drunk from last night, a couple of morphling addicts who seem to not really know where they are, the minuscule and incredibly strange inventor of the electronic device and Mags, Finnick's unintelligible mentor and friend. They are not told much, Plutarch has a plan which he does not really disclose, but from what he does say it seems more like suicide for a large group of them, but nobody protests. Whatever must be done, will be done. She is glad she talked to Finnick about it this morning. He is a lot more emotional than her, not dead inside. Losing him would be terrible, but the way they are living is not really living, it is just waiting. And there is only so much waiting one can do before one goes crazy. 11 months a year they wait for a month of seeing each other secretly, clandestine love making and dreading the next 11 months together and then it all starts again. If there is a chance for a better future for themselves or for others, it is worth fighting for it.

They leave together and she watches the morphling addicts dance to an inner tune past them repeatedly. Haymitch, that is the name of the district 12 mentor, has passed out in the room and the female sidekick of the genius inventor stands in the hallway, banging her head repeatedly against the wall.

"So, this is the group that will help lead the revolution… I am so glad we are in good hands" she whispers at him and he doesn't smile. "Everyone is useful in their own way, you will see" he whispers back and she is glad that their roles have reverted back to him being the emotional optimist and her being the moody pessimist. Pessimists get to say "told you so" so much more often. She likes saying "told you so". They are still walking one of the strange passageways, hidden underneath the viewing hall and since nobody but the morphling addicts are there with them, she stops in her tracks, and when he turns to look at her questioning, wondering why she is not walking, she stands up on her tip toes and kisses him quickly on the mouth. He looks surprised and shies away from her, "in public?" he hisses and she grins at him. "Just reminding myself why we are doing this". A slow smile spreads on his face and he quickly looks both ways before putting his arms all the way around her, lifting her off the ground and kissing her properly. Butterflies wake up in her tummy. She has never kissed him anywhere but that room. When they come up for air, he puts his lips to her ear and, with her legs still suspended midair, he whispers "Never forget".


	4. Last night at the Capitol

AN: very long break, life got in the way, I am sorry. But I am back and hoping to write a bit more continuously from here on. Fair warning this chapter is a bit more soppy and doesn't move the story along much. The next one will be all action!

Last night at the Capitol

The sky has turned that pale soft blue, the one letting you know night is over and soon the sun will be out; she stares at it without blinking until her eyes ache and sighs. The last night is always the worst, filled with silences because there is too much to say and yet really nothing to say at all. They always try to "make the most of it", which means making love a few times too many, as if that gave them reserves for the many months they will go without each other, holding each other in long, too tight, embraces and sometimes crying (mainly Finnick). Tonight was no different, though maybe it was a little. The excitement of the past few days is still there and the idea that this year things might be, will be, different. Really though, she thinks, things won't be. She will still be alone in 7, no friends, no family, nobody. There is no meeting planned for them, no underground activity, their role will be played in a year's time, at the next Games. The exact plan was not revealed to them, it kind of sounded like it wasn't really fully formed, depending on countless variables, but one thing was clear – those who are in the public eye, namely the Victors and the few public figures involved, have to pretend like they know nothing, lead their normal lives, react "appropriately" to any developments that may be out of the ordinary. They did exactly that at the crowning ceremony, where the tributes from 12, all shiny and bright and new again appeared, her, dressed like a baby doll and him, dapper but walking with a limp, holding hands. Johanna had done her usual scowl and eye turning, and Finnick kissed a few women, one of whom fainted from the excitement. As a Victor she could see past the smiles of the teenagers and see the damage; the girl looked overwhelmed and the hand that wasn't holding the boy's, balled up into a fist, kept twitching and drumming a rhythm onto her thigh. The boy looked a little more relaxed, despite clearly being a leg lighter, but there was emptiness in his eyes. She often marvelled at the Capitol citizens' capacity to instantly forget that they weren't cheering for a child star (or two this time) but at a child murderer. The victory ceremony is always the last day the mentors are needed, and the very next morning they are sent back to their homes in the victor villages of their districts. Some get asked to come back regularly, Finnick being one of them. He gets to come to the Capitol dozens of times a year, meetings are set up for him, he comes, stays a night or two with some lady, swears eternal love, then leaves again. In a way this is lucky for them, as there is no way letters would be able to find their way from district 4 to 7. But in the Capitol everything is possible. She on the other hand comes to the Capitol exactly once a year; for the Games.

She turns to look at him, wondering if he might have fallen asleep and finds him also gazing out of the window, lost in thought. His frown tells her he is probably worrying about everything; about his brother and parents, about Mags, about her. While the loneliness in her life is all consuming, she can go for days, weeks sometimes, without talking to another human being, spending all her time taking long runs in the forest, burning off energy by chopping down a tree here or there, at least she doesn't really worry. Of course occasionally, when she knows a letter is due and it arrives a week or two late, she feels a tiny twinge somewhere deep inside her guts, but she tells herself, that they wouldn't let anything happen to him, he is too valuable. And he is the only person she could possibly worry about. He on the other hand spends an inordinate amount of time thinking of all the terrible things that could possibly happen to the many people he loves. It must be difficult she thinks, feeling like at any point you could lose so much. She did not have time to think about it very much, before she even realized that she should worry for her family and friends, they were gone and it was all done. Of course she would rather it had never happened, but in a way it is easier to live like this than with the constant worry of disaster on your mind. Then again, she doesn't really know what he is like back home, he must exercise a lot, his muscles clear proof of that, spend time out in the sun… she imagines he has plenty of friends, though he rarely mentions any, she imagines him laughing with a bunch of other guys his age at some kind of fishermen meeting place, she imagines him surrounded by people who like him for himself rather than for his looks and fame. She never asks though, because she doesn't want this fantasy broken.

He blinks and breaks out of his trance, looks at her and gives her a little smile. "Hey" she smiles back at him, but her smile doesn't reach her eyes. He pulls her closer to his chest and she nestles herself into it. He is like a big cocoon of warmth. She can hear his heart beat quietly, rhythmically and she wishes that this moment could last forever.

...

Every "last night" of the last few years, he has tried to harvest memories to last him through the cold winter months. He wants to have something to think about when he lies with the women, stripped of all dignity and choice. When he tells any girl but her, that he loves her, he wants to be able to think of her and somehow make the lie less awful, make it less of a betrayal. And so every year he has lain there trying to store her smell, to bottle the sound of her laugh, the feel of her skin. Yet as soon as he hits the seat on the train, he feels like he has lost it all immediately. The smell of perfume of the old ladies lodges itself in his nostrils and he cannot get rid of it, the only sound he can hear is the screaming of the agonizing children in the arena, the ones that sat opposite him on this very train on the way to the Capitol, full of expectation and excitement, he feels nothing but the cold leather of his seat on this train taking him far, far away from her.

While she hides her face in his chest, buried in there like a snail in a shell, he thinks that at least for him it is less painful than for her, going home. He has people waiting for him on the other side; his mother and father will be thrilled to have him back. He is sure they know what is done to him in the Capitol, what they ask him to do in exchange of safety for himself and them, but they choose to ignore it. Every time he returns, even when it is his fourth trip that month , they wait at the platform, smiling and proud like the first time he came back, with a crown, a new trident and a fear of absolutely everything. Kai will be waiting for him, in his swim garments, excited to get in the sea for an epic water fight. He loves that Kai is still a child, who thinks the water fights are nothing but a game and he tries not to panic when he hears him scream in mock pain, attacked by one of this friends. Once, a long time ago, he was like that; he would jump on his friends, pretend to drown them, scream "now I die!" when he got impaled by makeshift spears, made out of rubber and foil. Then his parents signed him up to be trained as a Career and the mock fighting became more serious. His parents were not bad people, they still aren't; they genuinely thought he was strong and would beat the odds and the money and the fame would make his life better, and they were right about the odds at least. He hasn't been able to fully forgive them though.

Even his friends, though few are still interested in meeting up regularly, most being married and having young children by now, will be looking forward to seeing him. She never actually said it in so many words, but he is pretty sure that Johanna has no friends. She once mentioned a school friend from before the games but when he asked about her, a few dozen letters down the line, she said that friend was "not around much". He had decided not to ask any further, but he suspects that this friend might also not be alive any more. He can't imagine how difficult it must be, to go home to an empty house, in a city where everybody knows her but nobody loves her and he presses his lips to the top of her head. Soon, he reminds himself, soon everything will be different and if everything goes well, she won't have to be alone any longer. And if everything goes wrong… no, that is not a thought he is happy to entertain. It will go well. It will have to.

...

They are dressed and ready; there is no real reason for him to be dressed and ready already other than the fact that when she started to get dressed it felt like the most solidary thing to do. They are not due to go down to the train station for a few hours, but she needs to leave before people start filling the corridors and asking questions about her leaving his room. Technically it would be possible to give each other a last hug at the train station, a lot of the other mentors do, particularly the old ones who have seen each other year in and year out for up to 50 years, but then it would be public and it would be filmed. It would probably not be really conspicuous even, but they agree that anything that is filmed is not real life and so they do the goodbye dance here, in his room, by the door. It is an awkward waltz; hug, kiss, sigh, repeat. He has tears rolling down his face when he hugs her for the last time and she tastes them, salty, on her lips after their last kiss. He repeats his usual goodbye and she nods silently, then presses a kiss into the palm of his hand and quickly leaves the room, before it gets even harder.

It is an unspoken agreement that they have kept throughout the years, she arrives early, always alone (she has never had the pleasure to take any of her young mentees home), slips into her train and sits right at the front where Blight and Holt won't bother her. He arrives late with Mags in tow, usually there is a bushel of ladies waiting for him screaming, he takes their gifts, blows kisses, hugs the other mentors goodbye and only just makes his train, sitting in the very last carriage, waving at his fans. This way they won't see each other and their last memory is of them alone, not surrounded by others, being their public selves. They also always slip letters into each other's pockets the night before, so that once the trains are rolling in opposite directions, hers north west, his south east, they have something to read.

He waits to be out of the city and for Mags to leave his side, she usually sleeps the entire time, then he opens the letter.

"Hey you, this might be the very last time we have to do the sneaky letter thing after leaving the Capitol…" he smiles and let's himself fantasise of a world where they can live together (in 4, he couldn't imagine not living by the sea or close to his family), and just be themselves. Every single day.


	5. Communication after 74th HG

Letters between the end of 74th HG and the announcement for the Quarter Quell

"Dear J,

How are you? It has been 3 weeks since I saw you and I miss you so very much. I only had a week at home before they asked me back. I tried to write but it was very busy that first time. I have been here for a couple of days now and I don't know how long they will want me to stay. I am a little bit relieved I must say because at home… well, my mother has once again chosen someone for me to marry. I know you are laughing your head off, I can imagine it exactly. In mother's defence, it is a nice girl this time. She works in the netting factory and her brother went to school with me. But now every evening my mother asks me to bring something over to their house (things like an egg, or a needle, things I am sure they can barely live without) and then I have to stay and make small talk with her. Luckily for me she enjoys poetry and recites very long poems so I don't have to say much apart from "that is very nice". Times like these I wish I could tell my mother and father about you. Well, maybe it will be possible. Maybe soon…

Which reminds me, I saw P yesterday and he said there would be news soon. It seems like things are falling into place. But for now, more waiting.

Love you, F"

* * *

><p>"F,<p>

Your last letter nearly didn't make it. I don't know what it is like for you, but here we have a lot more peacekeepers around and they have started to open all packages, even (or particularly) the ones coming to the VV. They opened and went through the flour and corn with their dirty paws, sieved the milk, tore through loaves of bread. Only W's immeasurable amount of food and them getting tired halfway through that pile made it possible for me to get to your letter.

There is unhappiness; it is palpable, but also a lot more public punishment. It is hard to say what came first, people being unhappy and acting out or people being publicly lashed making their friends and family unhappy which leads them to act out. You would say something about a fish biting its own tail but I have never seen a live fish so I wouldn't know about fish auto-cannibalism.

I hope P is right. News can't come fast enough.

I was tempted to write this in verse but I guess you are getting your daily dose of poetry via your new girlfriend nowadays. Send her and your mother my love. Poor dear has no idea what she is signing up for.

Only 10 months to go… J"

* * *

><p>"Dear J,<p>

I hope this got to you, it wasn't the easiest finding an alternative method but we can't risk using our old method and I can't imagine not knowing from you.

I haven't really noticed increased surveillance here. Feels the way it always does. But I got the impression you have always been a bit lighter on peacekeeper presence generally. However, travel is becoming more difficult. A lot more checks on every district border.

Still no news from P. I have not come across him again since that time, rumour has it he is very busy and that there will be something big happening regarding the next games. You know how rumours spread here, faster than jellyfish venom.

My mother's efforts continue but it only makes me miss you more. She is so friendly and not at all mean. I couldn't deal with that for the rest of my life.

Love you so much, F"

* * *

><p>"F,<p>

Rest of your life you say? Getting a little ahead of ourselves are we? I guess depending on what crazy plan we signed up for, the rest might not be that long after all anyhow.

Yes, your letter got to me (as is obvious by my reply…), this method is much better (and faster). The peacekeeper numbers have once again increased, rumour has it 8 is not a happy place right now. Someone mentioned to B that the border to 8 has been closed and there have been a bunch of "incidents". Incidents probably meaning "people knew too much so they had to go byebye". I hate waiting for news, do you know how much longer?

It is getting cold, we had the first snowfall. You would love it, I can imagine you frolicking through it, like big dog, not getting how it is just frozen water that makes everything slow and cold. When I was little we would get school off for "first snow" sometimes… it used to be the most exciting day. Now it is just a colder, wetter, quieter Thursday. My mittens have seen better days too but I can't get myself to knit and I don't want to go to town and have to talk to people. People are just annoying most days. So I have cold hands instead.

Are you going to be home for the tour visit?

Coldfingered J"

* * *

><p>"Dear J,<p>

Not sure this is going to work, but I hope it does, I was promised it (and if his price matches his honesty, it should!). M made them just for you and the material is what they use for the thermal blankets, it should be really warm. I can't imagine touching snow, though I have seen it in the Arena. It looks so soft…

I had heard something about 8 and worried a little about you but I knew you wouldn't do something stupid, right?

P sent me a note and apparently plans are being finalised, we will have news next week before the tour starts. This year is going slower than any year before I think. Maybe because it will be the last one. I miss you more every day and if some rumours I heard are true may see you much sooner than we ever thought possible.

Love you, F"

* * *

><p>On the rebel device:<p>

"Attention: decisions were made and the following victors will be needed for mission QQ.

From 3 – Beetee and Wiress

From 4- Finnick and Mags

From 6 – Roan and Tazmin

From 7 – Blight and Johanna

From 8 – Woof and Cecelia

From 11 – Chaff and Seeder

From 12 – Haymitch

If you are on this list, you will receive a special invitation to the Capitol for the victory tour feast. Further instructions will be received there, please follow them strictly. P"


	6. Victory Tour Ball

Victory tour ball

He is dressed to the nines, a bowtie pressing on his glottis every time he swallows, and keeps changing his weight from one foot to the other. She hasn't arrived yet and he fears that she might not come. He hasn't heard from her in well over a month, ever since the announcement came through on their devices but he thinks she might not want to risk their new letter system when she knows they will meet face to face at the Ball. If the message had been intercepted and something had happened to her he would know. He keeps reminding himself of this. He has been at the Victory Tour Ball in the Capitol a number of times, once as a mentor and then three times accompanying a lady who had paid very well to have him there. This is also how he was told to attend this time, the lady in question having arrived already pretty inebriated. She has been at the drinks table for a good 20 minutes now, further adding to her unsteady state. Better for him though, the drunker she gets, the less she will remember and the less she will expect from him.

He scans the crowd again. It is the most lavish of all the Victory Tour Balls he has gone to, more flowers adorn the hall, more types of food and drink on every table and more cameras than ever, following the Victors around. He hasn't met them and doesn't want to either. Rumour has it they offered something to a high number district and got a handful of people killed. He did not see it but he assumes it was 11, she was fond of the very young female tribute there and the big male tribute spared her when he could have just crushed her. But he watches them and they behave… oddly. Suddenly a voice hisses into his ear "they look splendid don't they? Not at all like they are faking". A smile spreads across his face and he looks at her out of the corner of his eye. She is in a dark green dress and has silvery strands in her hair and she gives him a very brief, sincere smile before returning to her pursed lips and her hand brushes his as she walks past. She is here and she is well and everything will be fine, he thinks and returns to the drinks table where his lady friend throws herself at him and makes a show of kissing him, accidentally knocking over several drink flutes in the process.

She walks through the crowd, trying to ignore the loud bashing from where Finnick's drunken companion is trashing a table while trying to sleep with him in front of the cameras. She had been searched on the train when she left District 7 and again upon arrival in the Capitol, all of her things had been looked through and she had been asked to take all of her clothes off. She wondered if this was the new protocol or if there were suspicions about her personally. Usually a quick pat down was all it took. It had taken her a while to compose herself after the second search, her device which she had hidden properly before leaving had moved during the first search and she had been terrified of them finding it. Luckily they dismissed it, as there was a very similar looking contraption that was used to play songs in the Capitol. Nonetheless she had needed a good hour for her heart to stop beating out of her chest and her hands to stop shaking, and so she joins the Ball after it got in full swing. Her prep team was very unimpressed by her tardiness and instead of the elaborate pin and lace construction they had wanted for her hair dress, they had just sprayed something stiff and silvery into her short hair. "Suits me anyway" she thinks, "as the pins would have been difficult for Finnick to remove tonight" and she cannot stop herself from grinning wide at the thought of his fingers going through her hair.

At the corner of the stairs she sees old Mags and she goes over to thank her for the mittens in a hushed whisper. Mags answers something completely unintelligible as always but she takes it to be "you are welcome" and she stays next to the old lady for a few minutes. Mags points at the dance floor where the Victors from 12 are dancing, him swaying a little unsteadily, probably due to his prosthetic leg. "It is all for show, I can read it in her face." She tells her but the old lady cocks her head and slowly shakes it in a way that makes Johanna question herself. Then Plutarch interrupts the "lovers" on the dance floor and starts dancing with the girl and whispering in her ear. Johanna hopes he doesn't tell her too much, she does not seem like the brightest bulb; that is for sure. She watched some of the Victory Tour footage on the train, and the boy seems smart but the girl irritates Johanna. She should know better than to keep angering the people high up. There was no footage of it, but by the sudden end to the footage of 11, it is clear that there was unrest there after the tour speech. Then again, Johanna did not know better either and she paid the highest price imaginable.

At midnight they get picked up and driven somewhere in cars with windows that are completely dark; their meeting must be underground from the distinct lack of windows and fresh air in the room with grey walls all around. All the victors from the list are there, in addition to a number of Capitol rebel leaders and Plutarch. They sit around an oval table and Finnick locks eyes with Johanna for a brief moment, then looks down at his hands. Next to him the drunken victor from 12 offers him his flask, but he shakes his head, then Plutarch begins.

"Thank you all for coming. It wasn't the easiest to get some of you invited to the Ball" he looks at the two morphling addicts, one of whom seems to be asleep while the other one gives her a scalp massage, "but I think conveying all of this information via messages was just impractical and probably impossible. The work in the Districts is going well. In some better than others obviously and we need something big to get those dormant Districts to rise up. We have devised the perfect way to do this, a way that will not only scare the Capitol, showing them that we are everywhere, but also reach every District. We are taking over their Hunger Games!"

Murmuring starts across the room. "taking it over how?" "will there be no more gam…" "what does he mean?"

"SILENCE! Let me finish. The next games are a Quarter Quell and Snow has agreed to have the tributes be reaped from victors of the past."

Everyone stares up at Plutarch, including the morphling who seems wide awake now. Johanna's eyes flicker over to his and back to Plutarch. They had suspected it would be games related, Plutarch is gamemaker afterall, but he had not really thought that he would be sent back in. And of course Johanna as well. He sighs and dries his palms on his dressy trousers.

"The idea is that we will go in to protect the tributes from 12, the girl, Katniss, in particular. She is the face of the revolution and we want her to continue being our symbol. Risen from the bottom, she defeated a much larger enemy. She shall be our mockingjay!"

"Why is she not here then?" the large male victor from 11 asked.

"She cannot know about it, she is a child and she would not be able to play along." Finnick thinks he can hear Johanna say "no kidding" but he is not completely sure.

"You will have to play your roles convincingly initially, the idea is that we will come in and rescue as many of you as we can, after we have made sure the arena is very publicly destroyed on live television. We want the whole of Panem to see what we can do. And we want Katniss to come out of there alive and kicking. Those are our two goals!"

This time Johanna's voice is loud and clear "So you plan on sending us into the Arena with tributes from" she looks around the room "one and two, big career victors, who know nothing about this plan and will most probably kill most of us off before we even stepped into the Arena, in order to protect that girl in the HOPE that she lives up to your expectation of symbol for the war? What if she does something stupid… let's be honest here, she is prone to those, and gets herself killed? What do we do then? What if we all get killed right off the bat?" She points to the morphlings, then to Mags, then to Haymitch. "THESE people? To keep other people safe?" She shakes her head. "I thought we were dealing with smart people here…"

Plutarch nods and continues: "Yes, each of you has been chosen for a reason. You are strong, you are beloved in the Capitol…" "or we are the only Victor standing in our District" Johanna adds more quietly. "You may very well be, Johanna, but you are also committed to this revolution or so you said. You are willing to give your life for the cause. This is what might happen. We will try to save you, but if we don't succeed you will have given your lives the way you wanted." She leans back and looks down at her fingernails.

"If you can also save the boy from 12, Peeta, that would be ideal. The lovers, together, will be an even bigger symbol. But our number 1 priority will be the girl. We have already made sure that each of you gets reaped, including Haymitch. The boy will volunteer, of that we are sure. And if not, then Haymitch will also help protect the girl. The exact plan, your exact role in the games, will be decided after the reaping, once we see how the girl relates to each of you. We are not going in blind – there will be a plan, but for your own protection and the protection of the mission, we cannot disclose what the Arena looks like to you. However we will give you enough information to keep you as safe as possible. We thank you deeply for being part of this. We believe that this mission will be the change we all hoped for, this mission will change everything. This is the beginning of a new Panem."

Plutarch won't answer questions today, he says he has given them as much information as is possible and needed and then he leaves. Cars will bring them back to their hotels and he will see them again after the reaping.

She waits in her chair until most people have left the room, looking down at her fingers, scratching green varnish off the nails. Dying for the cause was always an option and an option she did not fear, but going back into an Arena? She was not ready for that. He moves over to her, stands behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders. After looking up and making sure nobody else was in the room she whispers, her voice breaking midway: "This is my worst nightmare."


	7. The night after the meeting

The night after the meeting

He looks out of the window absentmindedly and realizes it is starting to dawn and yet he has not managed to sleep one minute. All night he has been going over this again and again. The first time around he was so young and so innocent. Or stupid, as Johanna would say. He had been training for a couple of years and he had been told over and over that he was excellent, the strongest they had seen in decades, an impressively steep learning curve and that his looks would get him sponsors, plenty of sponsors. His coach talked about the day he'd return from the Arena and make him proud. A couple of boys had been angry, they had been training for much longer than him and being 17 this year was their last chance and they felt that this 14 year old golden boy was taking their place. He had a natural talent with the tridents, he'd had it since he was a little boy and his dad had taken him out to fish in shallow waters. Why his parents had encouraged it, he doesn't understand, but maybe they too believed all the voices that said that without a doubt, their boy would win. And they were right, he did win. But every minute in the Arena was agony. The fear was all consuming, everyone and everything out to kill you.

He had been part of the career pack of course, alongside the girl from his District, a 6 foot Amazon called Delphi. Their pack had bonded before the games even started, they had all volunteered and had all had scores in the double digits and in the Arena they quickly stuck together. He had had allies all the way to the end, when that penultimate cannon signalled not just the end of a life but also the end of alliance. He had been faster with his trident than Storm, the girl from 1, had been with her knife. Split seconds were the difference between dying and becoming a victor. He had thrown that trident at her instinctively, without thinking and it had embedded itself deep into her chest. Storm was 16, big round brown eyes, and a quiet husky laugh. A girl he had spent the better part of 12 days with. Who had slept next to him, and held guard when he needed a rest. Who he had shared food and even a few stories from their districts with. Her eyes widening as she falls forward is what he sees in his nightmares most often. Her death felt worse than any of the others. She had almost been a friend.

Johanna jerks and cries out in her sleep next to him and he rolls over onto his side and tucks her into his chest, his chin on top of her head and makes soft shushing sounds. He can feel her hot breath on his collarbone, the fast beating of her heart near his. She has been screaming periodically through the night, sometimes waking herself up, others settling back into the fitful sleep that is providing no rest without ever fully becoming conscious. He is trying not to think about the fact that this time, when he goes back, she will also be there. That is truly his worst nightmare.

* * *

><p>She is awake but stays immobile, her face pressed into his throat and chest, her nose nestled into the soft space at the end of his neck. Every time she has woken up, he was already awake and quick to provide comfort, so he probably did not sleep at all she guesses. Despite the nightmares that were more vivid than they had been in years, she has woken up less scared. So yes, they will go back into an Arena, but they will be among the youngest and strongest. They are healthy. Finnick will charm his way into an alliance and she has little to lose. And ending this reign of terror will end the games for once and for all. No games ever again. Children like Kai will be safe. So dying in the games if they are the last games ever will be worth it. Her mind wanders to her own games. Her brother had been injured in the woods early in the autumn and had not been able to walk until spring, both her parents were weakened by lung infections and her sister in law had just had a baby that year and so she had entered her name as many times as possible, in order to get the tesserae.<p>

When she was reaped her brother was the one who had told her to play weak. "I don't want people to think I am weak. I want them to think I am strong!" she had told him and he had answered that the careers would want to kill the strong but wouldn't care for the weak. "Be weak upfront and strong inside" and so she had cried inconsolably when she waved them goodbye at the train station and spent most of the training days pretending she could not hit a target even when she was right in front of it. She had the lowest score of anyone that year, a 2. Her mentor had sighed and said she would never get sponsors and he had been right. She didn't. But her brother had been right too, at the initial bloodbath nobody minded her, too busy trying to kill the other strong ones. She had been able to go unnoticed for days until less than half remained and then, when it got dark, she had gone out and killed people in their sleep. Slit their throats the way a coward would. At least, she told herself, they weren't afraid; they just didn't wake up. The fact that her Arena had been woods was lucky for her, she knew how to navigate woods, even if these were not pine trees but something with giant leaves she had never seen before. She did not speak to a single other tribute in the Arena. The boy from her District had hated her from the outset, there had been no District alliance there. She had never seen him before the reaping and she doesn't know what happened to him. All she knows is that she did not kill him. When it became necessary she had proven to be much stronger in direct combat than anyone thought possible, her skinny arms strong from chopping wood all winter to keep her parents' in firewood. Her manicured hands, rough and blistered on the inside, able to swing the little axe hard, breaking through bones and skulls. Towards the end she had killed the male career from 4 thanks to the secret weakness Finnick had whispered into her ear when she seduced him at the training centre. He never brought this up.

She doesn't want to kill again, but she will. If she has to, she will. It will be hard because she will know them, she will have talked to them this time around, but if the girl from 12 is what it takes to turn things around she will kill whoever is in the way. Tough on the inside. Only this time she will also be tough on the outside. The only one she would never be able to kill is Finnick, but he won't put himself in the position of her having to do it. She kisses his collarbone softly and he shifts slightly. "I wouldn't kill you." She whispers. He clears his throat and whispers back: "That is a relief." He moves back further until they can see each other's face and he grins. "I love you, too."


End file.
